opponent troops are chosen based on global usage frequency as well, starting low and increasing. Assuming players naturally use ‘stronger’ troops as they become available, this should correspond with an increasing level of difficulty.

The system becomes self-correcting

as matches are played, the troop usage frequencies equilibrate

statistics show which troops have favorable win-frequencies against specific troop combinations, which can help to further tailor difficulty.

Yes, please! I’ve seen this in a few other games and it’s traditional referred to as “Survival Mode”. I’ve always loved it. One of the cool things is that it makes you rethink the meta and troops you didn’t necessarily use before suddenly find value.

The devs could publish stories about particularly heroic gauntlet runs.

About the tunable difficulty - I find the jumps between the higher difficulty levels extreme. Maybe players could exchange traits, or troop type bonuses, or mastery bonuses, for additional rewards without outright multiples of the enemy stats.